


Echoes

by zenelly



Series: Natsume Yuujinchou Week 2016 [4]
Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Canonical Child Abuse, Gen, Happy Ending, canon-typical child abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-05
Updated: 2016-10-05
Packaged: 2018-08-19 18:10:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8220244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zenelly/pseuds/zenelly
Summary: For Natsume Week 2016, Day 4: Sadness/Loneliness
  It’s better when they shout. 
  This is what Takashi learns when he is young.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Natsume is so, so sad and I love him.

It’s better when they shout.

This is what Takashi learns when he is young.

When they shout, he at least knows that isn’t right. He knows they aren’t supposed to do that, that it isn’t proper or kind. But they don’t yell. Not often. Not where he’s supposed to hear. Instead, it’s words spoken harshly between teeth, a hand pressed to a cheek, lips pressed into a thin line, the quiet, distraught phone calls asking him to move week after week after week.

It would be easier if they all just shouted, so Takashi knew to hide in his room and not say anything. To forgo his food in favor of another moment of borrowed time.

(In what kind universe did someone see fit to take his parents and leave him with youkai?)

So alone Takashi stays, suffocating in the untrusting void that drowns everyone and everything that comes near it. He can trust no one. No one is kind. No one who is kind is real, and he supposes that’s just what he deserves. The love of beings that no one else knows are there. Meanwhile, all the humans he meets stare and whisper for him being different, and that one is least like a yell out of all of them, taking instead the form of uncomfortable hurried whispers, but he will carry the sound of it within him like an open wound.

The youkai, at least, shout and scream too, but Takashi is the only one around to hear them. He hates that, that he can hear them and no one else can. He hates that sometimes, he wonders if everyone else is right and he is just making it all up. 

So the shouting and not-shouting-just-disappointment-and-unease continues, and Takashi swallows it down, turning the noise into himself. If they won’t be quiet, he’ll have to be. He’ll have to smother the fear and insecurity and just smile and say nothing, eyes darting over the shoulders of his relatives to find the waiting, watching eyes of the ayakashi around them.

Until Touko-san and Shigeru-san appear, and when they say they want to take him, they mean it. When Touko presses her hand to her cheek, it’s concern for him. When Shigeru’s mouth flattens to a thin line, he’s holding back a laugh, or perhaps Takashi has forgotten to let them know he’s headed out, so used to no one caring.

Until Kitamoto and Nishimura and Sasada. Until Tanuma. Until Natori-san. Until Taki.

And they all like him. Which is a marvel in and of itself. 

But it’s one he’s slowly growing used to, one that he hasn’t stopped pulling out to examine and turn over and over until the thought is well-worn, polished by his touches. He has Touko-san and Shigeru-san who care for him. He has Tanuma and Taki and Nijimura and Kishimoto to hang out with. He has Nyanko-sensei to look after him, and the gratitude of the local youkai, who view him with a mix of benevolence and the childish glee of someone with a new toy. 

It’s something new. Something worth looking forward to.

Takashi finds he kind of likes it.


End file.
